Steam has made live streaming a reality with a new update today to its beta client. Valve unveiled the new Steam feature here and highlighted some of the things you and your friends can do with it.

Dubbed Steam Broadcasting, anyone who uses Steam can stream audio and video from any game available on the service over the Internet, and that content can be viewed either by the public at large or only by people on their friends list (depending on your settings).

The BBC reports that Netflix will expand its reach to Australia and New Zealand in March of 2015. The company said that it will expand to these new regions in the first quarter of next year and will have two new original series - Marco Polo and BoJack Horseman - ready to watch when the service goes live there. Pricing and programming available for Australia and New Zealand will be announced at a later date.

GANDER.tv will continue its agreement with Sony Entertainment and Turnstyle Music Group L.L.C. to stream the November 6th concert at DROM, a leading performance venue in the New York City’s East Village. Headlining the record release show is three-time Grammy-winner and current saxophonist in the Dave Matthews Band, Jeff Coffin, and his group The Mu’Tet. The concert will be available to Sony’s PlayStation family of devices and on GANDER.tv’s broadcast network. The broadcast will be accessible for a small subscription fee of $3.00 on both systems.

Redbox Instant will be shutting down tomorrow, according to an announcement by Redbox. Verizon's attempt to compete against Netflix and to supplement Redbox's brisk kiosk-based movie and video game rental service with an online streaming component, is being closed after two-years in existence.

"Redbox Instant by Verizon... will be shut down on Tuesday, October 7, 2014, at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time," customers were told in a notice on the service's website.

A new report from research firm GfK indicates that, while videogame systems are still the most common hardware used for watching Netflix on a TV screen , they are being used much less than they were three years ago. The report, "Over-the-Top TV 2014," also indicated a growing number of US households are relying more and more on dedicated set-top/plug-in devices to watch Netflix on a TV set.

According to new research from Parks Associates - as reported on by Home Media Magazine - 46 percent of all American households with broadband have a video game console connected to the Internet, and about 38 percent use said console devices as their primary means of streaming entertainment content such as Netflix or Hulu.

During its Tokyo Game Show press conference yesterday, Square Enix revealed Shinra Technologies, a new cloud-based gaming platform that hopes to deliver first-party titles to consumers. Named after the evil corporation in Final Fantasy VII, and headed up by former Square Enix president and representative director Yoichi Wada, the service is set for a beta launch early next year in Japan. A North American beta is planned for sometime in 2015 as well, but a concrete date has not been set.

It looks like the paid peering agreements video streaming service Netflix signed with AT&T and Verizon earlier this year are finally paying off. According to Netflix's Monthly Speed Index for August, the average Netflix stream on Verizon FiOS was 2.41Mbps during the month, up dramatically from 1.61Mbps in July. AT&T's U-verse service offered average Netflix performance of 2.61Mbps in August, up from 1.44Mbps in July.

Cloud-based gaming service OnLive and TP Vision have announced a new strategic partnership that will bring the OnLive Game Service on new models of Philips TVs powered by Android that will be released in Europe during 2014 and beyond.

During a recent Hack Day - as chronicled in this blog post - engineers at Netflix mange to design a prototype Oculus Rift user interface for its popular streaming service. The specially designed UI that makes this possible is being called "Oculix" and lets users control the Netflix menu using hand and head gesture controls.

Time Warner Cable is the latest internet service provider to get a fee from streaming video service Netflix, according to GIGA OM. Time Warner Cable has officially signed a paid peering agreement with Netflix, giving it direct access to the ISP's customers.

In a status update on Facebook, Netflix CEO Red Hastings said that Netflix now generates more revenue than premium pay channel Home Box Office (HBO). Reed said in his post that the company managed to pull in $1.146 billion compared to HBO's $1.141 billion.

In a Reddit AMA, Twitch CEO Emmet Shear said that in-game music getting muted was a mistake. Shear said that the target of the mass muting of archived streams was music played in the background that was not licensed ("ambient music"). He also acknowledged in the thread that some accidental mutings occurred and that they are looking into fixing that problem. He acknowledged that it was also probably a bad idea to roll out all of this stuff without first announcing it to the community.

In a lengthy post on its official Blog, game streaming service Twitch announced that it will soon begin implementing a revamped video-on-demand service that offers users higher quality VOD options, the ability to view archived content on mobile and other devices, and a simplified system for exporting video to YouTube.

Raptr has introduced a major update to its service that adds the ability to record or stream gameplay video with virtually "no degradation of system performance thanks to hardware encoding support across both AMD- and Nvidia-based graphics processors (GPUs)."

We're not sure how cloud-based game streaming service OnLive or Mad Catz Interactive Android-based micro-console Mojo are doing, but apparently those two things have teamed up, according to an announcement by OnLive today.

According to a new report from research firm IHS Technology, more people than ever are watching eSports thanks to popular games such as League of Legends and Dota 2. Around 2.4 billion hours of eSports videos were watched during 2013, according to the report - nearly double the 1.3 billion hours watched in 2012. The report goes on to predict that 6.6 billion hours will be watched by fans in 2018, with China representing the largest market for online eSport views in the world, followed by the U.S. and South Korea.

Rumors are circulating that Google's YouTube video service is in talks to buy out streaming service Twitch. According to reports in the Wall Street Journal and Variety, those talks are still in the preliminary stages. The deal is rumored to be worth $1 billion to Twitch if it comes to fruition.

According to multiple sources within the company, Microsoft plans to lift the Xbox Live Gold requirement for consumers who want to watch Netflix, Hulu and other streaming media apps on Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

Basically it means that consumers who buy a brand new Xbox One will be able to watch these services right out of the box without having to worry about having an Xbox Live Gold account. Of course you'll still have to set up a free Silver account in order to do anything.

Electronic Arts and ISP Comcast are believed to be negotiating a game streaming deal, according to five independent sources speaking to Reuters. According to sources speaking to Reuters, Comcast will give some customers the ability to buy and stream EA titles through Comcast's new X1 operating system. X1 is only available in certain areas covered by Comcast at the moment.

Last week Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.) sent a letter to entertainment streaming service Netflix asking the company to weigh in on the proposed merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable. This week Netflix gave its opinion... to shareholders.

"If the Comcast and Time Warner Cable merger is approved, the combined company’s footprint will pass over 60 percent of U.S. broadband households," Netflix CEO Reed Hastings wrote in a letter to shareholders, adding, "Comcast could control high-speed broadband to the majority of American homes."

The long rumored set-top box/gaming device from Amazon has finally been revealed. The device is called the "Amazon Fire TV" and it is available today for $99. The device offers consumers the ability to play games and stream video from Amazon's video streaming service, Amazon Prime.

eSports gaming league Major League Gaming announced that its Xbox 360 app has launched today in Australia, Canada, the U.K and the U.S. You'll need an Xbox Live Gold account to use it. The streaming video / entertainment app allows users to get direct access via the Xbox 360 to its programming on MLG.tv, a streaming service the league launched in November of last year.

There were rumors floating about last week that the PlayStation Store would offer rental options to customers as part of its Gaikai-powered streaming service for older PS3 games. It turns out that there is some truth to it.

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Wymorence: For me it just boils down to the fact that, even at a giant company, when a game comes out annually it just gives it a vibe of being rushed out the door. And god knows Unity sucked some major lemur with all its bugs...03/31/2015 - 4:22pm

PHX Corp: I launched my spotify account today, and I kinda went a little overboard with adding music03/31/2015 - 3:59pm

Sora-Chan: Con't. Games like AC are a pain to someone like me who likes to play games in order. So when a game gets too many releases too quickly, it puts me off. Only exceptions are games that have no interconnected underlying stories like the FF games.03/31/2015 - 2:53pm

Sora-Chan: Wikipedia has rarely let me down on matters like this. But yeah... AC needs a break.. like two.. or three... or eight years.03/31/2015 - 2:51pm

Conster: There's 9 already?! I think I played 1, 2, and the ones inbetween 2 and 3.03/31/2015 - 2:23pm

Sora-Chan: Con't There are now Nine... of just the main entries into the series. There are 13 more in the "other games" department.03/31/2015 - 2:15pm

Sora-Chan: I tried to get into AC. Was having a decent time with the first one, at which point they had already released three titles. Then a fourth came out... then a fifth... the wall kept growing before I could finish the first.03/31/2015 - 2:14pm

Daniel Lewis: I think ubisoft should give AC a break before it's milked to death,and i'm a big fan of the games03/31/2015 - 1:15pm

Daniel Lewis: The only thing said i disagree with is the final quote on Men's experiences are seen to be universal but women are gendered,though doesn't anita say that games with male protagonists are male power fantasies,so in turn both are gendered03/31/2015 - 1:08pm

Daniel Lewis: i found the video to be much better than any of the TvW series and it's about time the positive women are put in the spotlight03/31/2015 - 1:06pm

Daniel Lewis: So feministfrequency released a positive female character video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXmj2yJNUmQ03/31/2015 - 1:05pm

Daniel Lewis: I think the guy who made the direct leak said it was an april fools joke when a real one was announced03/31/2015 - 12:43pm

MaskedPixelante: No way Nintendo would let information like that get out. Remember, they shut down a memoir about the localization of Earthbound by enforcing a 20 year old NDA on the author.03/31/2015 - 12:42pm

james_fudge: Conster: the larger issue is that Ind. does not protect LGBTQ+ people under state law03/31/2015 - 12:11pm

PHX Corp: @MP I think it is confirmed(not an April Fools joke) http://mynintendonews.com/2015/03/31/nintendo-direct-confirmed-for-wednesday-april-1st/03/31/2015 - 12:00pm

Conster: Apparently Pence intends to amend SB101 so denying service isn't allowed - without explicitly protecting LGBT+ and while still allowing the many other things you can get away with now if it's motivated by your religious beliefs.03/31/2015 - 11:53am

MaskedPixelante: http://mynintendonews.com/2015/03/30/rumour-nintendo-direct-on-april-1st/ A supposed full leak of tomorrow's Nintendo Direct, so you can all laugh and laugh about how wrong it is.03/31/2015 - 11:35am

PHX Corp: http://kotaku.com/why-a-tekken-7-character-is-being-called-a-phoney-1694724959 Why a Tekken 7 Character Is Being Called a Phoney03/31/2015 - 10:08am